Transcription
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- US Pronunciation
- US IPA
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- [kwahyn]
- /kwaɪn/
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- US Pronunciation
- US IPA
-
- [kwahyn]
- /kwaɪn/
Definitions of quine word
- noun quine Willard van Orman [awr-muh n] /ˈɔr mən/ (Show IPA), 1908–2000, U.S. philosopher and logician. 1
- noun quine (computing) A program that produces its own source code as output. 1
- noun Technical meaning of quine (programming) /kwi:n/ (After the logician Willard V. Quine, via Douglas Hofstadter) A program that generates a copy of its own source text as its complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some given programming language is a common hackish amusement. In most interpreted languages, any constant, e.g. 42, is a quine because it "evaluates to itself". In certain Lisp dialects (e.g. Emacs Lisp), the symbols "nil" and "t" are "self-quoting", i.e. they are both a symbol and also the value of that symbol. In some dialects, the function-forming function symbol, "lambda" is self-quoting so that, when applied to some arguments, it returns itself applied to those arguments. Here is a quine in Lisp using this idea: ((lambda (x) (list x x)) (lambda (x) (list x x))) Compare this to the lambda expression: (\ x . x x) (\ x . x x) which reproduces itself after one step of beta reduction. This is simply the result of applying the combinator fix to the identity function. In fact any quine can be considered as a fixed point of the language's evaluation mechanism. We can write this in Lisp: ((lambda (x) (funcall x x)) (lambda (x) (funcall x x))) where "funcall" applies its first argument to the rest of its arguments, but evaluation of this expression will never terminate so it cannot be called a quine. Here is a more complex version of the above Lisp quine, which will work in Scheme and other Lisps where "lambda" is not self-quoting: ((lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x))) (quote (lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x))))) It's relatively easy to write quines in other languages such as PostScript which readily handle programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) in languages like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine for ASCII machines: char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main() {printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c"; main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);} For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line break. Some infamous Obfuscated C Contest entries have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways. 1
- noun quine Willard van Orman. 1908–2000, US philosopher. His works include Word and Object (1960), Philosophy of Logic (1970), The Roots of Reference (1973), and The Logic of Sequences (1990) 0
- noun quine ˈWillard van Orman (ˈɔrmən ) ; ôrˈmən) 1908-2000; U.S. logician & philosopher 0
Information block about the term
Parts of speech for Quine
noun
adjective
verb
adverb
pronoun
preposition
conjunction
determiner
exclamation
quine popularity
A common word. It’s meaning is known to most children of preschool age. About 85% of English native speakers know the meaning and use the word.
This word is included in each student's vocabulary. Most likely there is at least one movie with this word in the title.
quine usage trend in Literature
This diagram is provided by Google Ngram ViewerTop questions with quine
- quine on what there is?
- what is quine?
- what is a quine?
- what does quine mean?
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